One thing that stirs up quite a lot of discussion whenever the subject is crossed is AI. Everyone has their own ideas of what the AI should or should not do. AIs get more criticism than most other areas of games these days, and a lot of development houses get a lot of flak from the community when their AI doesn't function like the player wants it to.

This is generally not a design issue, or something that can be solved by brainstorming. AIs are often inadequete because our understanding of AI is simply not advanced enough to give people what they want.

I want to make sure that all of our energies are spent efficiently, and so I would like to request that you only post about AI issues when you are asked to by the AI team or the design team. More than any other issue, it's easy to get distracted by 'wouldn't it be nice if' AI issues, while that doesn't help the programmers; what may help them (or not!) is if we are able to develop the precise logic that our AI will require. When and how this happens is up to the AI team, and it's quite likely that non-programmers will be of absolutely no use in this. But if we can help, rest assured that the AI team will ask for it.

So please don't create any AI threads unless you are requested to. Thanks!

Aquitaine

Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!